inaclovenpine | (no subject)

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[After this ill-fated conversation with Andrew Wells.]

The Caribbean inlet outside is having a storm.

Which is kind of weird, because the rest of the lake is just kind of cloudy and cold. The sky over the inlet is heavy with clouds and rain, though, and lightning flashes back and forth from cloud to cloud.

WHY ARE MORTALS LIKE THAT.

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His brow furrows, but he doesn't look surprised.

"What happened?" he asks. "What led up to you scaring him?"

"He had heard tell of Prospero, and me. He told me of his master and his bonds; he asked about my master and our--"

She breaks off.

"I think -- he thought us 'like."

"Huh," Matt murmurs. In his experience, Andrew actively resisted comparisons.

"Yeah, uh--I can see how that could've been unsettling."

"I am not like him."

She looks at Matt, flickering and full of rain.

"My master is not -- my Prospero is not like that."

"Well," Matt says mildly, "what you're like and what Prospero's like are two different things."

"No -- no, our masters, too, are not alike," she says, a little desperate. "Prospero is not cruel, seeks no more slaves, would not use those he has to such bad ends. My master would not."

She wraps the image of her arms around herself.

"If in other worlds, some other Prospero is so, I'd -- no. But now I speak of things I do not know, have only heard, have never seen, nor will."

Matt frowns.

The words that spring to mind, effortless as if they've always been there, are, If he's so great, why don't you sound convinced?

"I have to admit ... I think it's cruel to keep slaves at all."

She shakes her head.

But when she speaks, it's only to say quietly, "I wot that I have railed against it, too."

He rakes a hand through his hair.

"But you ... that's what I was trying to say. How he is isn't a reflection on you. And it doesn't make you like Andrew."

"Mayhap."

The storm is starting to break apart, the clouds dissipating everywhere except directly over them.

"But I -- I'd serve my master well. I'd please him, do his bidding, when it's just. I do not like my bonds, but I could not--"

She lifts her shoulders.

"I met a demon here that said that it had helped another me o'erthrow Prospero's spell. But in exchange, for magic always costs, it took my place as servant to the Duke. And he ran mad," she says, miserable, "ambitious, murd'rous, vile. And so the demon killed him."

Matt frowns.

"I'm sorry."

And he is. He doesn't like Prospero at all, but everything about that other world sounds completely terrible.

"'Tis none of thine," she murmurs, shrugging.

"I don't think I totally understand, though," he says. "What part of that upsets you? Or like, reminds you of what's going on with Andrew?"

Even in the midst of an existential crisis, or whatever this is, apparently Ariel can spare a moment to look at Matt Jamison like he's dumb. But only a moment.

"I do not think that I could do the same. I could not kill him, if it came to that. And when I heard what he'd done there, still, still, I went back meek and did whate'er he bade. No need to leash me: I heel'd on my own. Would Andrew not do so, had he the chance?"

That look is sort of comforting; despite himself, he smiles in a small flicker.

Then he frowns.

"But you went back to your own Prospero. Not that one."

"Dost thou, Matt, think my master so much better?"

He pauses.

"I think he's treating you poorly. It's at the--foundation of your contract. But that's different than killing people."

"He is not altogether bad to me," Ariel says, wanly. "He speaks me fair. He trusts me."

She shakes her head.

"I do not know if things like me can love, but could he not love me?"

Matt's mouth rounds to an oh.

He doesn't say, Oh, Ariel,, but he sighs almost as if he might. Instead, his fingers scrub along his cheek, rubbing the barely-there scar. The knowledge it's there may be stronger than the feel of it.

"One of the hardest things I've had to learn," he says quietly, "is that someone can love you and still treat you like shit."

"I cannot understand it," she says sadly.

The rain finally peters out, leaving just gloomy cloud cover. Ariel drifts down to sit on the sand and wraps her arms around her knees.

He watches her a moment, weighing his words.

"Most of us don't love like we should," he says after a moment. "And I include myself in that. Either because we don't understand that love should be about putting someone else first, or because we know but can't do it."

"Why can they not?"

"Well ... for me personally ... love doesn't exist in a vacuum. You have to balance what you want with what the other person wants, and the other things that are putting demands on your time, and that takes ... a weird combination of awareness and courage?"

Rueful: "Awareness being most in short supply."

"Almost as short as courage."